Using a man page in source references

Pomerano · 01-28-2018, 07:49 AM

Many of my mates and I are experiencing some major difficulties when attempting to refer to some sources in Linux' implemented documentation.
This is mainly because not every document in Linux can be accessed and/or viewed without a terminal pager program. And therefore, cannot be used in source references. - Or can they? - Of course, they can.
But how to format it properly into an academic document? Or even better! - In citations of format, using any of these citation styles...:

MLA (Modern Language Association)
APA (American Psychological Association
IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)

In case it still is a bit fuzzy on what is asked, first of all, I apologize. - Let me clarify it with a theoretical scenario:
The information you wish to refer to can only be accessed and viewed using a terminal pager program and not from anywhere else. Then how do you put this as an accepted source of reference?
Let's say it's iptables. Now it's not very professional to indicate something related to...: "Write the command line "man iptables" in the terminal to be able to view the source".

I hope this made sense. If not, I'd be happy to go even more in-depth to serve you an even better understanding of the issue that we are facing.

Any valuable information, to help solve this thread, will be marked as helpful and get a personal message saying 'thank you' followed by feedback. Apart from lots and lots of gratitude, of course!

Thank You.

On a side-note:
The initial content of this thread was originally posted by myself.
However, the thread was serving another purpose and asked for a different solution than the one stated above does. Also, the original thread completely lacked the necessary information and details to successfully solve it.

To moderator:
If you would flag this as a double-post and then force any of the threads to be removed, then I would kindly ask you to remove the original thread which can be located here. Thank you.

scasey · 01-28-2018, 09:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pomerano

...
The information you wish to refer to can only be accessed and viewed using a terminal pager program and not from anywhere else. Then how do you put this as an accepted source of reference?

I don't think you're premise is correct. In my experience, any command's man page can be accessed on the 'net, usually on several different servers. The collection at die.net seems fairly complete.

Can you use a URL as your reference?

Pomerano · 01-28-2018, 12:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by scasey

I don't think you're premise is correct. In my experience, any command's man page can be accessed on the 'net, usually on several different servers. The collection at die.net seems fairly complete.

Can you use a URL as your reference?

Yes, certainly. So any man page can actually be found on the web, huh?! - Is there perhaps even a way to search for them through some updated Linux-documentation-search-engine-kind-of-a-deal? (not google). - Reducing the risk of finding ourselves referring to outdated versions with the wrong author?

EDIT: Could this also be the case with whatis and info?
EDIT2: linux.die.net seems very good so far. Do you have any more similar databases to look through??

Thanks! +1

scasey · 01-28-2018, 01:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pomerano

Yes, certainly. So any man page can actually be found on the web, huh?! - Is there perhaps even a way to search for them through some updated Linux-documentation-search-engine-kind-of-a-deal? (not google). - Reducing the risk of finding ourselves referring to outdated versions with the wrong author?

EDIT: Could this also be the case with whatis and info?
EDIT2: linux.die.net seems very good so far. Do you have any more similar databases to look through??

Thanks! +1

I use duckduckgo to search, but most any search engine will probably find what you want. Have you tried searching for whatis or info documentation? I find several other websites by searching for "linux documentation"

As with any research, it's incumbent upon the researcher to verify/validate the source before using it.

chrism01 · 02-07-2018, 05:38 PM

Obviously die.net (which I like a lot) is only one version of the man pages.

The local copy installed on whichever machine you're on is the ONLY one that can be taken to be definitive - as cmds change, so do the man pages ... (hopefully

)

IMHO, anyone smart enough to be looking at the src code already knows about the man pages (or should).
Worst case I might add 'see "man iptables" ' if eg it's not obvious that that section of code relates to that specific man page - that should be plenty.

Pomerano · 04-09-2018, 07:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrism01

Obviously die.net (which I like a lot) is only one version of the man pages.

The local copy installed on whichever machine you're on is the ONLY one that can be taken to be definitive - as cmds change, so do the man pages ... (hopefully

)

IMHO, anyone smart enough to be looking at the src code already knows about the man pages (or should).
Worst case I might add 'see "man iptables" ' if eg it's not obvious that that section of code relates to that specific man page - that should be plenty.

Thank you for your response. :-) As for the request - We solved it by switching to Debian, hehe.
https://manpages.debian.org/

chrism01 · 04-10-2018, 12:18 AM

My 2nd sentence still stands though ie unless all your specific machines are all locked to the version described by those webpages, there may still be (albeit slight) differences

More so if people are eg running RHEL derived systems ... consider your audience.

Ofc we're splitting hairs here haha.
As I said anyone smart enough to be working at src level should be aware of these issues..